The Asia-Pacific Housing Forum and The Asia-Pacific Leadership Conference

This has been a long week, but a very interesting one – 6:00 alarm clock and twelve-hour workdays, listening to and documenting presentations and then integrating the documentation of others, meeting and networking with people from Habitat for Humanity International and Habitat national chapters from several countries (and I think I have finally learned all the names of the people in the Philippines national office!), sitting in over-air-conditioned rooms without going outside all day (monsoon rains anyway, followed by rains from Tropical Storm Maring), too many sweet snacks (but great lunches, with salads and fruits!), filling my mind with the issues of temporary housing after disasters and permanent housing for the poor.

Monday through Wednesday the event was the 2nd Asia-Pacific Housing Forum. The first one, two years ago, was held in Singapore, and the next one, in two years, will be held in Bangkok. It was fortunate that this one was in Manila and that I could attend. There were over 400 people from over 35 countries – from NGOs, government, academe, the private sector and more. The room contained an interesting mix of faces, colors, ages, genders, national clothing, and perspectives.

Some of the statistics are amazing – one-fifth of the world’s people live in slums. The Asia-Pacific region has a disproportionate number due to the nature of its cities – large conglomerations with not enough infrastructure, long commutes from the outskirts to the centers, and constant building ever farther out as more and more people arrive in search of a better life. 550 million people in Asia-Pacific live in slums, 60 percent of those in urban areas, and that number will grow to 1.3 billion. Several people showed slides of the dramatic increase in the number of natural disasters in recent years – and pointed out that the Philippines was “disaster central,” with typhoons, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, mudslides and more (though there were people from Indonesia and Bangladesh that could give them a run for their money).

The forum focused not on the problems though but on the solutions – policy changes, financing innovations, involving the community in rebuilding and more. My job was to document the disaster relief breakout track (Habitat doesn’t work on Day One disaster relief but on disaster mitigation and on building permanent housing for the displaced – so it wasn’t that relevant to what I am here to do but it was very interesting to learn about and possibly focus on in the future). My main job, though, was to integrate the documentation of all of the sessions into one daily recap of the key recommendations and cutting-edge solutions; this involved waiting for the summaries of others. And waiting, and waiting. I know how to distill a presentation as I hear it; not everyone has this skill, so I was there late. That said, it was a good job for me. I did some networking, too – met several people to potentially send resumes to. On Thursday it was back to Calauan with some leadership gifts fund-raisers from the U.S. – I’ll be keeping in touch with them. We also went to the part of Pasig River from which the families are being resettled. I have never seen such squalor. Amazing. And then the seasoned Metro Manila Volunteers went out with the new ones, Julie and Bill. They seem nice! Today it was back to the hotel for Habitat’s Asia-Pacific Leadership Conference – about 120 people from the various national chapters. I attended a session about the campaign (all of my Annual Giving volunteering makes me familiar with how a campaign gets done), branding, and partnerships – good to see the strategic overview of the organization.

Other highlights – I met the head of Friends of Habitat, the organization that handles much of the local fundraising. She’s a former Miss Universe (one of two Miss Universes from the Philippines and still full of grace, poise and beauty). I picked up a brochure from the hotel spa – the conference was held in a Thai hotel, and the offerings (and prices) are similar to those of the spa in Chiang Mai. I may come back for some pampering! It gets better though – there was an NBA Legends event in the same hotel at the same time. I almost crashed into Dominique Wilkins in the hallway, made eye contact with Robert Horry, and best of all, had a picture taken with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I thought briefly about going to the game tonight – NBA Legends vs. Philippine All-Stars – but for one thing, it’s been a long week. For another. I’ve seen lots of NBA Legends, so it seemed only right to give Filipinos the chance. Julie just started and I wanted to shop with her and otherwise help her get oriented. But the real reason is that I am going away for the weekend – and as long as the alarm has been ringing at 6:00 every morning, I’m getting up at 6:00 again to get an early start.